Rising to the occasion, one final time: Preethi Athreya’s last lap in Conditions of Carriage

Share Via Email

A scene from Conditions of Carriage

City-based choreographer Preethi Athreya’s Conditions of Carriage is a unique performance, at Adishakti, which sticks to body basics and focuses on movements like jumping and running. “I first conceptualised this in the year 2015. I brought together a group of people that came from different walks of life — dancers from different disciplines, parkour specialists and theatre artistes — and trained with them for almost an year,” she says, adding that they have since toured across the country after their debut performance at SPACES, Chennai.

She will be staging this performance for the final time ever at the Veenapani Festival this Sunday. “It has been a long run of three years,” she admits, adding that they have received training from Prabhakaran of Chennai Boxing Federation and Prabu Mani from Parkour Circle.

Performed in a pit bordered with planks, the performance has the characters jumping and moving individually across the space until they sync together to move uniformly with the percussion. Preethi says she aims to portray the age-old adage — ‘What goes up must come down’ — in a metaphorical manner through the process of jumping. “Our bodies are its most basic condition during a jump,” she says.